News flash: Hussein "not a dictator"

Or so says the judge in the current Anfal trial being conducted in Baghdad. Anfal is the term in the vernacular that refers to the 1988 gassing of the Kurds in the province of Anfal.

Today, the witness, a Kurdish farmer, told the court how a furious Saddam Hussein shouted "shut up and get out" when he pleaded for the life of his wife and seven young children, who were rounded up in their village in 1988, Reuters reported. "He told me to approach him, and I begged him for their lives," said the witness, Abdulla Mohammad Hussain.

Mr. Hussein, who is allowed to address witnesses in court during the trial, said it did not make sense that an Anfal survivor would visit a "dictator."

“Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein?” Mr. Hussein said. “Wasn’t Saddam a dictator and an enemy to the Kurdish people, as they say?”

The judge, Mr. Amiri, replied to Mr. Hussein: “I will answer you: you are not a dictator, not a dictator, you were not a dictator.”

Well, I'm glad those impartial Iraqi courts with their impartial Ba'athist judges have settled that once and for all.

It looks like the Bushies decision not to let the trial go to the International Criminal Court is going "swimmingly."